Hoth: Blood and Ice

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain arrived back at the hangar after receiving word that the little blue elephants had completed their work on his craft. Nightingale walked about the base with a secret security detail ghosting her as she stretched her legs.

Sylvain, however, had stretched his legs enough for one standard space unit and decided to return back to his ship for some rest and contemplation.

As he walked up the ramp, however, he noticed something was off... Had the little Ortolans messed with the insides of his ship as well?

He began looking to his left and right in the common area for what was amiss about the room...

[Darth Bellious]

Nothing seemed amiss, but something seemed afoot. Or even atop. Like slender red feet on the table, and red palms keeping abreast a cup of something. With the lekku tossed behind and dangling, it was a position of relaxation.

"I was around and you weren't, so I decided to wait for a bit. Doing so outside seemed disingenuous. Hope you don't mind. I got a drink ready."

[Sylvain Torsin]

"You are welcome anytime Moyr. Even if I had the ability to keep you out." He said as he removed his mask and revealed a soft, but tired smirk.

He came to sit down nearby Moyr, "How can I be of assistance?"

[Darth Bellious]

"Very nice of you. But I don't want your assistance, Syl. More like conversation and company. Do you have time for something less utilitarian?" Her own lips twitched into a small smirk of her own in reaction to his. "Though I guess the conversation may still drift toward something pertinent of our mutual concern. We shall see. For now, I think you deserve a drink." She gestured to the other glass.

[Sylvain Torsin]

"I would fancy such a talk..." He leaned forward and took the glass, holding it up to be filled.

"Thank you... for coming to get me."

[Darth Bellious]

"I exercised my freedom to do so." She chuckled, leaning to fill, her lekku following trajectories dictated as much by will as by gravity. "I personally enjoy the fact of you being alive, Syl, so you don't need to feel obliged."

She leaned back. "When you get a grip of nostalgia, supposing it happens, how far back do you go? What is vivid, and what is blurred? Minds sort it all in mysterious ways."

[Sylvain Torsin]

He leaned back and took a sip of his liquor. "Nostalgia, huh... We're referring to good things then... If so, then quite a ways back indeed."

He let out a soft breath and swirled his drink in his hand, "Smiles... glances caught and glances stolen... feelings... laughter... I would say those are the most vivid. Details are stowed away somewhere much more 'utilitarian' in my mind..."

[Darth Bellious]

She sipped as she listened. "The joy of being alive then. I am glad you still have it in you, even if it is overshadowed by all kinds of rational concerns, from abstract, to bureaucratic, to menial. Let's give that happy Syl a shot. Care to take me some memory lane when you felt truly alive, perhaps even free?" Her eyes were on the ceiling, as if there was a large holovid projector that would show them a recording from yonder days.

[Sylvain Torsin]

He closed his eyes and tried to think back, "One with present company... Since you are here and now..."

He nodded his head softly and looked down at the table between them, "Teasing over dinner at the Cantina... Talking of power and freedom... So young we were..."

[Darth Bellious]

"Ah, our conversation about dislike of weak drinks and climbing to the top to see how the world looks like from there. I remember my exuberant confusion! I suppose a lot of things got clearer since then, but that uncompromising drive fed by ignorance had its taste." She smirked. "And a ton of flirting that went with it. That was good too... Was it the first time we raised a toast together?"

[Sylvain Torsin]

"I think, so. And yes... lots of flirting... Though I'm glad I don't remember all the stupid things I said with such blind confidence..." He chuckled through his nose and shook his head.

"What an ass I was..."

[Darth Bellious]

"You were young and cocky, I was young and needy. It had its charms and perils. But when I look back at it not as moments but as histories, I am not opposed to what consequences painful causes had brought about. I feel remorse about some things I did or didn't do, but it is another form of passion, so I don't seek ways of stifling it. But I have few true regrets. In a moment, there is a need to linger. But when it passes, we see how it no longer holds us back."

She let out a long sigh, then she laughed.

"Ass you say, but I bet you can give some appreciation to how smartass you were at various twists and turns."

[Sylvain Torsin]

"Well I certainly wasn't smart for most of it. Smartass is probably a suitable description... But it is as you say... You let things go. Move past them and realize what they did to make you who you are... The 'lessons' as it were." He replied.

"What kind of regrets does the Matron of Liberation keep with her..."

[Darth Bellious]

"My remorse? Oh well." She drank more.

"The strongest source of it would be the Emperor. I feel angry for having fallen into his ruse on Ziost, for killing Shae Vizsla, for giving up more that he deserved to know the truth about him, for not being there to fight him in person."

"The most recent is not seeing my apprentice's betrayal coming. It demonstrated to me that loneliness can be a worse torment than committed oppression. It can corrode the strongest will. I wish I had realised it sooner that time isn't always on my side."

"Last but not least, losing you is my oldest remorse."

She wasn't looking at him to fish for reaction. She kept staring at the ceiling. She didn't even ask for reciprocity of confiding. If it was about to come, it would be freely given, without soliciting.

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain took what was left of his drink and downed it himself.

He sat in silence for nearly a minute… trying to formulate a response that matched his own feelings.

“The two things I care for most in life came as a result of my choices that night… For that I cannot say I regret it… Though there are so many things about then and after that I do regret.”

He paused, “But if things had been different… I think we too could have made something special…”

He let out a sigh, “But… there resides in me a doubt that if the choice had ever been to choose me or the Dark… I’m not sure if I would have made the cut. That simply is not you… Nor would I wish to have bound you to a path that separated you from your freedom.”

[Darth Bellious]

"I won't dismiss that doubt, Syl. I am not sure anything can. We can't plan for infinity, now can we? I am not sure how much of it is still left to us anyway, given the circumstance. With the hindsight we have, we can't even anticipate our future selves. What we can do is to shape the now rather than linger on guesswork about paths not taken." She finally glanced at him. "I'd rather replace remorse with a different passion, trade exegesis for a song."

[Sylvain Torsin]

“And what aria would you sing now? What song to move us from past to present to future?” He asked.

[Darth Bellious]

"I don't know if my songs can do that, Syl. I know I don't want to move your mind where it can't be. But I'll keep singing until you stop me." She closed her eyes.

"I remember you most as so severe
And all the grit you wore to disappear
I never know which you I'd find
Some days you'd show up all redesigned

I remember you sometimes let come undone
I'd sing and you couldn't help but let tears run
And it felt to me like heaven had opened the skies
A man so harsh and heavy letting love pour from his eyes

I saw your love beneath the pain
I saw you fight through every day
Oh, why couldn't I make you okay?

In a melody you were finally free
You'd forget the guilt and for a moment see me
These days I'm singing, searching all the eyes
For that same freedom, I am too deprived

I didn't get it then but I sure do now
And I'm terrified I'm becoming you somehow
And everyone I ever love just gets dragged around
Hanging on to promises of higher ground

But I saw your love beneath the pain
I saw you fight through every day
Oh, why couldn't I make you okay?"

[The original song.]

She paused for catching calmer breath and watering her lips.

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain sat quietly and listened as the song started... guarded... skeptical of the world... shielded from the recesses of his own heart and from the outside world.

Yet... as the melody rose and fell, the swelling from within began to push and recede against the containment walls that held in the grief, pain, sorrow, and anxiety of the man.

The mix of alcohol and music swirled within him as images of the past escaped over the walls and flowed through his mind's eye...

Then as the song reached its close the overflowing torrents pressed through the narrow and dried passageways that all humans possess to allow excess emotion to escape... Sylvain had not cried in over 9 years... and yet two streams of moistness flowed from each of his eyes as his upper bite came to clasp his bottom lip in a last clinging attempt at defense.

Subtly wiping away the trails of wetness on his cheeks Sylvain replied, "As... beautiful as ever Moyr..."

Another tear escaped his eyelids as he leaned forward to refill his drink.

"I would... avoid becoming like me if you can..." He replied.

Leaning back with his drink in his hand he continued, "I grew up in a home... without excuses. My father led the army that conquered a third of the galaxy with inferior numbers and resources... Results were all that mattered."

He looked down, "I developed a keen hatred for weakness... And accordingly a keen hatred for myself... who in the end is nothing but a ball of weakness covered over with some austere coating. All my life I sought to attach myself to those whom I considered strong... Because reasons or circumstances do not matter... only results."

He paused as his voice tightened, "And then... she died..."

His lips tightened as he attempted to push through what he was trying to get out, "And I was left to hate the woman that I had most loved... Just as I had always hated myself... The results were what they were... She was dead. Walked into it headfirst... And there I was... I had two children to protect... There was no more room for weakness. There was no more room for love..."

He leaned back in his chair and shook his head in consternation, "And this will be my legacy... a loveless... practical... cold man who passes the trauma of his life down on to his children. Someone who blindly pursued power to protect others... but mostly just left scars wherever he went."

[Darth Bellious]

She scuttled toward him, finding some purchase on him, either taking his hand or hugging his arm, or anything similar. The details didn't matter; she just wanted to take a plunge into the well his emotional floodgates had drained so that something would be there, forbidding his practical mind to find loneliness.

"It won't, Syl. Not necessarily." She whispered. "It still can, but only you can make it inevitable. And you can unmake this inevitability. Whatever we owe to the dead, good or ill, they are gone. Neither of us can change how we've been made by ourselves or by them, true. I can steel myself to tell you about my own horrible past, revisiting the time of enslavement and abuse, and all the things I've lost in fire I myself stoked. But you can end this any moment. You have that strength. For the sake of your children, I think you want to. To stop trying to be a man of unfulfilled abstraction and be a man of fulfilled humanity..."

She touched his cheeks. "The song didn't lie. These are beautiful, you know, and make you lovable. To your daughters too, I am sure. I was someone's daughter once, I can tell what I wanted but never got instead of being sold away for spurious reasons better called excuses. The torment of that deprivation was ever real. Prisons can have the smell of perfumed halls of government or that of a Huttese cesspool, but they imprison alike. I see you don't want this, you want to break free. With or without me, this is within your reach. You don't need a crutch, Sylvain."

She swallowed tears of her own, absorbing them back into her body, a reflex of desert physiology. But her lungs couldn't catch rhythm.

"Please don't reply just yet, let me sing for you more. I need it too, you know. To pour myself out this way."

It started with humming, like a soothing lullaby.

"Don't waste your time
Tryin' to ride the line
You're not so different from everyone else
We're all sailing in a fog on a sea of rat race hell

I don't waste my time anymore
Tryin' to bait the line, 'cause what for?
Some days I do nothing at all
Close up the blinds, drink, and shut all of my calls

'Cause, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all

Somehow we've all come to believe that we
Need so much more than we really need
And yes, I know that you've heard it all before
But some days you need to hear it some more

But it doesn't matter, but it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter
I doubt it matters, it doesn't matter at all

And meanwhile, sweet fruit left behind
Passing off the reins of your own mind

But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, yeah
It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter, no, I doubt it matters at all"

[The original song.]

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain took and held Moyr's hand as she sang to him. The words flowed over him as he went deep within his thoughts.

As she finished he gave her hand a squeeze, "I don't want to hate anymore... I don't want it..."

He looked down and shook his head.

[Darth Bellious]

She cupped his chin gently and pressed it up. "Feeling nothing instead is a mirage. Rather, let yourself feel something else as strongly." She spoke with conviction coming from the core of her Sith beliefs. It gave her confidence and a touch of humour, conveyed through her voice with a slight tease. "Unleash your passion for life, Sylvain. Stop the Dragon, thwart Baras, kiss me, take your daughter skiing. Try passions than can free you, whatever they may be."

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain looked up at her with a smirk on his lips and a soft laugh, "Take my daughter skiing?"

He laughed again softly through his nostrils, "The dark path that leads through skiing... I'll have to think on that one."

He then leaned back slightly in his chair, "Nothing is not what I'm after... But now... there is too much hate and fear in me... It's how I have lived... and my daughters have lived for these nine years. I cling to it... and it takes up so much space. Hate and fear are just another prison; one I have made of my own choosing for so long. There hasn't been room for anything else..."

He let out a sigh, "Codes have never worked for me, Moyr... Sith... Jedi... anything between. I can't follow them... because I see the results they have on my life. I need balance... I trust that I'll get there if I just keep following where I feel I should go."

[Darth Bellious]

She abandoned direct contact, leaning back herself and reclaiming her glass. Her hyper-engagement into his emotional state naturally ebbed, though what she'd heard from him kept the smile on. She nodded in understanding.

"Perhaps because you don't uplift them with enough philosophy? After all, the end of the Sith Code is the end of all prescribed paths. If balance is meant to be the expression of your freedom, then who can deny it to you?"

She chuckled. "I already hear it in from you, the confidence you can break that prison. I trust in that too. As for skiing, I am going to. I'll let you know if it works."

She fell silent after that, a bit nostalgic again, looking elsewhere.

[Sylvain Torsin]

He smiled out of the corner of his mouth at her last comment and replied, “Let me know how it goes. The desert child skiing on the slopes of Hoth… If that is not the image of freedom, then what is?”